Taxes, Politics & the feeling that Something is Amiss

Every year I swear, I SWEAR I will do our taxes early. I know a family who filed and recieved their tax return and already spent it on a family vacay to Florida. I picked them up from the airport when they returned, tanned and refreshed. Sadly, I've only just started on ours. AGAIN.

This is what I do every year. I procrastinate and then spend a week pulling at my hair, gnashing my teeth, crying and fuming, cursing the IRS then praying they won't find any mistakes and come after me. Generally, since moving to NC anyway, it all ends in a nice return for us which we'll spend paying down debt. Sigh. I hate being practical.

But on the news, politics as usual is taking a turn for the nasty for the current admin. Just this weekend President Bush's chief campaign strategist broke ranks from the narrowing circle of aides who still stand with the president in his decisions. His article in the NY Times is enlightening, an eye-opener, and probably the way many, many people who were taken in by Bush's apparent disingenuous attitude feel now.

NYTimes article on Michael Dowd

And it's not only Bush's advisors trying to turn him around. Yesterday in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act. Apparently global warming exists after all and some people think there might be value in attempting to slow its degeneration of our planet. Huh. In other news, the Earth is found to be round and the Sun shone on time this morning.

But even that is not all the bad news for the sitting president. Turns out that the new democratic majority in congress might have a backbone after all. After the president's childish admonition to the congressional leaders that he be allowed as much money as he wanted and the freedom to spend it any way he wanted and a personal threat to veto anything but a blank check arriving at his desk, they actually found the wherewithall to say no.

Did you hear that? They said no. I almost fell down.

There is actually a group of senators banning together to forward the idea of pulling funds for the war. In response to which, the president shut his eyes and held his breath, kicking his heels into the floor of the Oval Office. I assume.

It's quite a game of chicken and it would be interesting to see who flinched first, if not for the overriding awareness that these are American, human lives in the middle of it all. Lives who haven't been fully funded or fully protected since day one of this war. Lives that have been thrust into a situation we KNEW we couldn't control from the very beginning. And if you don't think that's true, go pick up the book written by our president's father, George H.W. Bush. In it he explains in detail why America didn't take out Saddam when he had the chance back in the 90s. Alternatively, see this link:
Bush Sr. on Iraq

Cheney, or Dead-Eye Dick as I like to call him, put out a statement saying again that if we set a deadline ont he war, the terrorists will simply wait us out before attacking. Okay. Say we don't set a deadline. How many of them do we have to kill in the meantime to make it okay to declare victory and come home? And aren't these people who carry their grudges happily for years? Won't they continue to fight tooth and nail for as long as our presence is in Iraq? These folks like their revenge eaten cold. They will wait it out one way or the other. There is no victory. We've toppled Saddam. They've had free elections. They elected people we don't like and now they're in a civil war. What's confusing about all this?

And explain to me the fear we have about fighting "them" over here? They're fighting EACH OTHER. If we're so worried about terrorists coming to this country, perhaps we should have spent some of the trillions and billions of dollars on security for our own country in the last six years. You know, more than just taking off our shoes and tossing out our hand creams at the airport. We are spending 8 billion a month in Iraq. That's 2 billion a week, 267 million each day or 11 million each hour. For what we spend in three weeks we could make needed improvements to our public transportation security. For what we spend in five days, we could put radiation detectors in all of our ports. And for what we spend in two days in Iraq, we could screen all our air cargo.

But let's not worry about all that. I know it's more fun to talk about Sanjaya's hair.